Kirsten T. Edwards is Professor and Chair in the department of Educational Policy Studies, as well as affiliate faculty for African & African Diaspora Studies, and the Center for Women’s & Gender Studies at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. Her research merges Africana Studies, Gender Studies, and Curriculum Studies. More specifically, Dr. Edwards is interested in antiblackness as a feature of the globalization of higher education, and the ways in which this condition animates various interlocking asymmetries.
Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Edwards held the Linda Clarke Anderson Presidential Professorship at the University of Oklahoma (OU). While there she was a recipient of OU’s Jeannine Rainbolt College of Education Patricia L. Hardré Graduate Mentoring Award as well as Women’s and Gender Studies’ Faculty Research Award. Dr. Edwards is a recipient of the ACPA Coalition for Women’s Identities Research & Scholarship Award. She also served as a faculty fellow in the OU Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships. Upon joining the faculty at FIU, the Office to Advance Women, Equity, and Diversity (an NSF ADVANCE grant-funded office, now terminated) named her a university Mentor Professor.
She is an elected member of the Professors of Curriculum Honorary Society, where she currently serves as treasurer. She also serves on two international editorial boards, Gender & Education and Teaching in Higher Education. Over the course of her career, Dr. Edwards has had the opportunity to serve on inter/national executive boards as treasurer for the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), equity and inclusion officer for Division B-Curriculum Studies of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and Associate Editor of Gender & Education.
Dr. Edwards is co-author of the forthcoming (2027) White Time: The Chronopolitics of Being in Global Higher Education with Riyad A. Shahjahan (under contract with University of Minnesota Press). She is co-editor of Race, gender, and curriculum theorizing: Working in womanish ways and Black Women Theorizing Curriculum Studies in Colour and Curves, along with Denise Taliaferro Baszile and Nichole Guillory; College curriculum at the crossroads: Women of color reflect and resist with Maria Davidson; as well as Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writerswith Shannon Madden, Michele Eodice, and Alexandria Lockett. She has published her research in various peer-reviewed venues such as Review of Educational Research; Feminist Philosophy Quarterly; Gender & Education; Race, Ethnicity, and Education; Urban Education; Curriculum Inquiry; Educational Studies; Innovative Higher Education; Higher Education; Teaching in Higher Education; Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics; Culture, and Society; and Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. Additionally, she has been invited to deliver several addresses on topics concerning the globalization of higher education, college curriculum and Black women’s studies, and educational equity and access.
Dr. Edwards earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum Theory and Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership, Research, and Counseling at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She additionally holds a cognate in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Research Areas
- Critical Pedagogy
- Curriculum Studies
- Black Studies
- Globalization of Higher Education
Education
- PhD, Louisiana State University
- MPA, Southern University
- BS, Louisiana State University
Selected Publications
Shahjahan, R., Estera, A., Surla, K., & Edwards, K. T. (2021). “Decolonizing” Curriculum and Pedagogy: A Comparative Review Across Disciplines and Global Higher Education Contexts, Review of Educational Research.
Shahjahan, R., & Edwards, K. T. (2021). Whiteness as futurity and globalization of higher education, Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00702-x.
Edwards, K. T., & Shahjahan, R. (2021). Navigating student resistance towards decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy (DCP): A temporal proposal, Teaching in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1928063.
Edwards, K. T. (2020). Melanated Minds and Diasporic Bodies: Womanist Curricular Praxis as Radical Intervention in Study Abroad, Curriculum Inquiry, 50(5), 419-439.
Dancy, T. E., Edwards, K. T., & Davis, J. E. (2018). Historically white universities and plantation politics: Anti-Blackness and higher education in the Black Lives Matter era, Urban Education, 53(2), 176–195. *Listed among journal’s “Most Read Articles” (#1, August 2020 - present)
Edwards, K. T. (2017). College teaching on sacred ground: Judeo-Christian influences on Black women faculty pedagogy, Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(1), 117-131.
Edwards, K. T. (2015). Perceptions of power and faith among Black women faculty: Re-thinking institutional diversity, Innovative Higher Education, 40(3), 263-278.